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Kcachegrind VS Valgrind

Compare Kcachegrind VS Valgrind and see what are their differences

Kcachegrind logo Kcachegrind

Callgrind is a profiling tool and KCachegrind is able to visualize output of the profilers.

Valgrind logo Valgrind

Valgrind is an instrumentation framework for building dynamic analysis tools.
  • Kcachegrind Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-03-15
  • Valgrind Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-15

Kcachegrind features and specs

  • Comprehensive Visualization
    KCachegrind provides detailed graphical representations of profiling data, helping users to visualize where time is being spent in their applications.
  • Customizable Views
    Users can customize various views to focus on different aspects of the profiling data, making it easier to identify performance bottlenecks.
  • Call Graph Analysis
    It offers sophisticated call graph analysis, which allows users to see function call hierarchies and understand the call relationships in their applications.
  • Integration with Valgrind
    KCachegrind integrates well with Valgrind, which is a powerful tool for memory debugging and profiling on Linux systems.
  • Cross-platform Support
    Though primarily developed for Unix-like systems, it is also available on Windows, increasing its usability across different platforms.

Possible disadvantages of Kcachegrind

  • Complexity
    The tool can be complex to use for beginners, with a steep learning curve due to its wide array of features and visualization options.
  • Limited Non-Linux Support
    While available on other systems, the best integration and performance are on Linux, making it less suitable for non-Linux users.
  • Resource Intensive
    KCachegrind can be resource-intensive, potentially leading to performance issues when analyzing very large datasets or long profiling sessions.
  • Limited Real-time Profiling
    It primarily works with data collected from previous runs rather than real-time profiling, which might not suit all types of application analysis needs.

Valgrind features and specs

  • Comprehensive Memory Debugging
    Valgrind provides thorough memory debugging and memory leak detection, identifying use-after-free and other memory errors in applications.
  • Profiling Capabilities
    In addition to identifying memory issues, Valgrind offers basic CPU profiling, allowing developers to assess performance bottlenecks.
  • No Source Code Changes Required
    Valgrind can be used without altering the source code, making it easy to integrate into existing projects for debugging purposes.
  • Supports Multiple Languages
    Valgrind supports a variety of programming languages, including C, C++, and others, making it versatile across different codebases.
  • Wide Platform Support
    It is available on many platforms, including Linux and macOS, providing flexibility to developers working in different environments.

Possible disadvantages of Valgrind

  • Performance Overhead
    Valgrind significantly slows down program execution, often by a factor of 10 to 30 times, which can make testing large applications more time-consuming.
  • Limited Windows Support
    Valgrind has no native Windows support, requiring developers to use alternate solutions or run it in a Linux environment.
  • Complexity with Multithreading
    Debugging multithreaded applications can be complex, and Valgrind's tools may struggle with race conditions and other threading issues.
  • Heavy Resource Usage
    Running applications under Valgrind can consume significant system resources, impacting other processes and the overall system performance.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    The tool has a steep learning curve, especially for users new to debugging tools, which can require additional time for proficiency.

Kcachegrind videos

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Valgrind videos

Detecting Memory Leaks With Valgrind

More videos:

  • Review - Finding memory errors with Valgrind
  • Review - sparcv9 New architecture to be supported by Valgrind

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Kcachegrind and Valgrind)
Software Development
43 43%
57% 57
Resource Profiling And Monitoring
IDE
38 38%
62% 62
Memory Monitoring
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Valgrind seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 41 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Kcachegrind mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Kcachegrind yet. Tracking of Kcachegrind recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Valgrind mentions (41)

  • Why does Debian change software?
    Hello, as always: imho (!) I remember this incident - if my memory doesn't trick me: it was openssl which accessed memory it didn't allocated to collect randomness / entropy for key-generation. And valgrind complained about a possible memory-leak - its a profiling-tool with the focus on detecting memory-mgmt problems. * https://valgrind.org/ instead of taking a closer look / trying to understand what exactly went... - Source: Hacker News / 9 days ago
  • Understanding the Odin Programming Language
    Odin has a builtin heap allocator that works the same way you would expect any other high-level language to do memory allocation–it's just that you have to free the memory yourself. Plus, Odin's built in `context` system makes it really easy to change what kind of allocator is used for different sections of code. For my use cases, I've never needed any more than a heap and an arena, detailed in this talk:... - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Intel Announces Retirement of CEO Pat Gelsinger
    Dunno, who says a lot of effort was put into Rosetta 2? It's mostly something that was needed in the first few years so you could run Chrome and Photoshop, but those have been ported now. It's mostly useful for running WINE but that's not super common outside games. That said, a binary recompiler has a lot of uses once you have one: https://valgrind.org. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Top 10 Profiler Tools for Optimizing Software Performance in 2024
    Valgrind is an open-source profiling tool suite ideal for debugging and profiling C and C++ applications. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Use Valgrind in your CI / CD
    Today I will show you how to use Valgrind to easily check for memory leaks on your code inside a GitHub Action. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Kcachegrind and Valgrind, you can also consider the following products

VisualVM - VisualVM is a visual tool integrating several commandline JDK tools and lightweight profiling...

WPMU DEV - WPMU offers WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, WordPress Multisite and BuddyPress Plugins and Themes.

OProfile - OProfile is an open source project that includes a statistical profiler, capable of profiling all running code at low overhead.

strace - Trace system calls and signals. A diagnostic, debugging and instructional userspace utility.

Eclipse Memory Analyzer - The Eclipse Foundation - home to a global community, the Eclipse IDE, Jakarta EE and over 350 open source projects, including runtimes, tools and frameworks.

perf - Perf is a simple app monitoring solution paired with meaningful alerts.